Climate Justice Fundamentals: An Introduction to Colonialism and Extractivism

This handbook emerged from our Irish Aid Global Citizenship Education project which began in 2021 on anticolonial climate justice education; a collaboration between Friends of the Earth Ireland and GCE educator Sian Cowman.

The main resource of the project, the Climate Change, Extractivism and Colonialism Facilitators and Learners Handbook was published in 2022.

After a number of residential workshops based on this Facilitators and Learners handbook’s activities, we were inspired to create this additional introductory handbook. It is designed to be accessible for people learning about climate justice and colonialism for the first time. It is also suitable for climate and environmental activists who wish to explore climate justice from an anticolonial perspective, and to build base knowledge to engage further with these issues. It is divided into three sections - Justice; Colonialism; and Extractivism, and each section has a number of participatory activities with a mix of styles (creative; text or video input and discussion; and so on). All activities have a detailed facilitator guide.

If you are using this resource we would greatly appreciate any feedback you can offer us on how you go on using it, engaging with the activities and exercises and any impact you'd seen as a result. Please forward any feedback to emmajayne@foe.ie